Ever since Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany first declared that if Ed O’Bannon and the other plaintiffs win their lawsuit against the NCAA his league might de-emphasize athletics, and revert to a model resembling Division III, that has become a rallying cry for the defendants.

The argument goes like this: If the NCAA has to cut players in on the billions of dollars earned from live broadcasts, memorabilia sales, video games, etc., and the courts allow it to become a class-action suit, college athletics would have to go on a serious diet. Big-time college football would be replaced by semi-pro football or become small-time football. Non-revenue sports would lose some of their income and some might have to be canceled. College athletics as we know it would cease to exist.

Get the picture? Armageddon is smaller. Armageddon means no more luxurious indoor practice facilities that cost more to build than a small hospital. It means some assistant football coaches might have to get by on less than $1 million a year. It means a college coaching staff wouldn’t be able to log more air miles than the State Department in order to woo 16-year-old high-school stars. It means that some Division I sports that attract zero interest from the entertainment-hungry public would have to get by on the same dollars as Division III sports that attract zero interest from the entertainment-hungry public.

Wait a minute, all these horrors are starting to confuse me. Is this Armageddon or an appeal for common sense?

Let’s be clear: In this case, I think Delany has assumed the role of Chicken Little. When he filed a declaration in federal court in support of the NCAA’s motion against class certification in March, he said any outcome that results in athletes getting a piece of the schools’ revenue could force Big Ten schools to de-emphasize athletics. This from the head of a league that just had expanded by taking in Maryland and Rutgers so that the Big Ten Network — do Division III conferences have their own television networks? — could get its pincers into lucrative East Coast TV markets.

Delany said he hadn’t polled his presidents but was confident that if conferences began negotiating with players and schools began paying one type of player more than another, Big Ten schools would not participate.

“If that were to happen, I think our presidents, our faculties and our boards of trustees would just opt out,” Delany told SI.com. “I don’t know what the opt-out means, whether that’s Division III or another model.”

Maybe this is supposed to scare us. But with the Big Ten schools gorging themselves at the money trough the way they have — the Big Ten distributed $25.7 million to its member schools last year and Ohio State football generated $62 million — it’s difficult to believe OSU and Michigan are suddenly going to become rivals of Otterbein and Denison.

Lawyer and NCAA expert John Infante of the Athnet website predicted a class-action suit could result in the loss in revenue of $15 million to

$20 million per high-end institution. That kind of loss might force a division in the top level between the super rich and the others — that would seem to qualify as “another model” — but again, is this Armageddon or a natural division that should take place?

A few years ago when I covered a Capital-Mount Union football game in Alliance, I was reminded that Mount Union Stadium didn’t look all that different from Ohio Field, the ancient High Street football and track facility that preceded Ohio Stadium as the home of the Buckeyes.

A fading black-and-white image burst into a resplendent, full-color trip back in time. The stadium was crammed with happy, devoted fans, same as the old place at 16th and High in Chic Harley’s day, and the players seemed every bit as intense and serious about the game as their modern-day counterparts in the Horseshoe.